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Sigil: City of Doors
So, where to begin? Sigil, of course - there ain't no other place worth beginning. Sigil: the City of Doors. This town's the gateway to everything and everywhere that matters. Step through one door and enter the halls of Ysgard, or turn down a particular alley and discover the Abyss. There are more gateways in Sigil than can be imagined; with all those doors Sigil's a useful place - and then some. Sigil: City of Doors' (SCoD) is a Persistent World for Neverwinter Nights 2, set in the Planescape campaign settings of Dungeons and Dragons. The server will primarily be focusing on roleplaying, which is attempted by creating an environment to support and inspire RP. There are also many places where characters can go to adventure in, and some quests to find and deal in manner the character would. Adventuring is not limited by levels or maximum number of group. Setting Want to share a drink with a fiend, or maybe discuss philosophy with a deva? Here it can happen in the same day, the same afternoon, even at the same table - nothing's too unlikely for Sigil. Strange folks abound here, and any one of them may prove ally or foe. Where else but in Sigil do humans, elves, dwarves, githzerai, bariaur, and tieflings form adventuring companies? Where but in Sigil can a well-heeled cutter hire a githyanki ship or a legion of yugoloth mercs? This is place to live... or die. No surprise every basher out there wants Sigil! The Cage'd be a pearl for any tanar'ri prince or baatezu lord. 'Course, a few big shots have tried to storm the city, but Sigil's not without her defenses. The birdcage's got more ways to close her doors than folks know about. Then there's the Mazes. Nasty little places Sigil makes for would-be dictators. Those that get caught inside go barmy, poor berks - sometimes they scream so much a body can hardly stand it. But there's a lot more out there than just Sigil. Get outside the city and there's the planes themselves: the throne of the gods, the battleground of the eternal Blood War, and home to more horrors and wonders than ever existed on any prime world. There's enough crusades, exploits, treasures and mysteries to keep a band of adventurers busy for centuries to come (though why a body'd want to go to some of those places is beyond reasoning). Anyway, all it takes is the right door, so step right through! Focus Although the main focus goes to roleplaying, it does not mean all you can do is chit chat around fireplaces about your fishing trip yesterday. There are plenty of hostile planes that provide a place for adventure, planes where monsters wander looking for you as much as you are looking for them. Scaling monster difficulties and areas have been attempted in a manner so that no single strategy works everywhere. Teaser Screenshots *Gray Waste of Hades *Outlands *Paraelemental Plane of Ice *The Nine Hells *Beastlands *Carceri *Under Sigil *Mount Celestia Sigil, The City of Doors in a Nutshell 'Concentration' *There is be plenty of lore available in the Roleplaying Guides, but you are not required to read all of it to play. *Experience will not be made overly hard to get, but monsters won’t be overly difficult to require superior builds to play either. There will be multiple ways to gain experience. *SCoD is aiming towards a mature audience. 'Requirements to Play' *Both the Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir expansion packs. *PWC and haks. (Just log in to the server, the autodownloader will download you the needed files during logging in!) 'Restrictions' *No standard NWN 2 race restrictions. *No standard NWN 2 class restrictions. (due to the lack of multiple PnP classes, more choices are left open) *No character build/multiclass restrictions. (except a maximum of 4 classes like in standard NWN) *Levels are restricted to ECL races. (Max level = 30 – ECL, ECL +1 race can get to level 29 and so forth), this is to avoid “I’m playing something odd, but won’t even try to roleplay it” mentality. *General thoughts are: DnD is not balanced. So we are not trying to balance things for the sake of balance. Epic levels are not considered epic either, when your character is level 21, they aren't tough enough to match with gods, nor are they in level 30. 'Experience system:' This one is a rather complex system, but I will try to make it simple and understandable. *There is a party experience bonus, which means you will receive more experience by joining a group. *Big level differences negatively affect your experience gain, however there is no hard limit preventing everyone from gaining experience. That being said, it will not be very rewarding for level 1 and level 30 to tag along either. *Fighting harder foes is more rewarding. 'Monsters & scaling' *Monsters scale by level in SCoD, this is mostly dependant on areas how they scale. Some areas scale smoothly for a small level range, where as some areas might have multiple level ranges they are designed for. *Monsters also scale based on the number of people in group. *Monsters have been tried to design for different combat styles, some classes handles other creatures better than others. Then there are foes that are more of single monster only spawns, difficult, but also rewards the difference compaired to fighting group of foes. *There are often some type of mini-bosses included to groups, sometimes they spawn, sometimes they don't. There are many variables that should keep encounters refreshingly different. 'Portals and Portal Keys' *In SCoD, there are many portals all around the city of Sigil that provide access to other planes. This is nothing new; however, you need to have the correct "portal keys" just to be able to see or use these portals, a concept which most are probably unfamiliar with. *Portal Keys, what are they, where can you get one? Those are likely the first questions to be asked. A Portal Key can be 'anything'... a song, rock, garbage, a golden statue. Anything... *However, we are attempting to provide more than enough hints in-game as to what portal keys are to most planes, be it through quests or other means. (as we aren't trying to make one of those "guess which of these million items opens the portal" games.) 'Stores & Equipment' *Stores in SCoD will not buy anything for more than 200 gold pieces. Some will find it odd no doubt. This has been decided in an attempt to support players trading between each other, rather than with an NPC (as you may easily gain more profit by selling it to a player). *Almost all basic equipment (up to +2 enchantment) can be found from the Great Bazaar, that will serve as a good place to start trading. More specialized shops (up to +5 enchantment) can be found from public faction guildhalls (after they're finished), both to release pressure (lagging) on areas from having too big inventories in one place, and to provide more functions for factions. *Special material equipment (e.g. cold iron, alchemical silver, darksteel) will be mostly limited to crafting, to have an actual purpose for the Craft Weapon and Craft Armor skills. *An Item appearance changer can be found in game, however some appearance choices might be taken out if they are deemed too odd for SCoD. 'Crafting/Enchanting' *Craft Wand, Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion prices will be modified to make sure it's cheaper to make the respective items than to buy them from stores. *You are able to craft weapons/armors (non-magical) through workbenches as usual, which is also reason why we have left most materials out of stores, so you'd rather craft yourself a cold iron or alchemical silver weapon to overcome damage reductions of foes. *More information about crafting can be found at Sigil City of Doors Crafting. 'Changed spells, abilities' Disabled abilities *Glass Doppelganger removed (due to several bugs that allow item or gold exploiting) *Shadow Simulacrum removed (due to several bugs that allow item or gold exploiting) *Disarm is NOT yet disabled, but if it is ending up bringing too many problems, it will be disabled or modified. ''Modified spells, feats & skills'' *Summon I – IX, Gate, Dead Walk, Shadow Dancer "Shadow", Palemasters Summons, Death Domain summon: there is alignment based summoning, and some of the special abilities are now scaled by level. *Stonebody/Ironbody: Deathward and Freedom of Movement no longer lets you avoid penalties. *Living Undeath: Deathward no longer allows you to avoid penalties. *Sleight of Hand no longer allows pick-pocketing from players characters; it still allows pickpocketing from non-player characters. It can still be trained normally and roleplayed through DMFI dice bags. *Spells such as Jagged Tooth, Magic Fang, Greater Magic Fang are now castable on any creature that has "creature weapons" regardless of race. This includes special PC races or summons. *Cleric Elemental domain now allows turning elementals like undead. Destruction domain allows damaging constructs. *Eldritch blast SR issue has been fixed. ''New spells: *Wizard/Sorcerer 1: Horizikaul's Boom, Negative Energy Ray, Shelgarn's Persistent Blade *Wizard/Sorcerer 3: Negative Energy Burst *Wizard/Sorcerer 5: Mestils Acid Sheath *Wizard/Sorcerer 7: Great Thunderclap *Wizard/Sorcerer 9: Black Blade of Disaster *Cleric/Favored Soul 8: Bodak's Glare ''Modified classes: *Doomguide no longer requires Kelemvor as a deity. *Red Wizard of Thay no longer requires specific alignments. *Arcane Trickster only requires 1d6 sneak attack OR death attack from any class or prestige class given source. *Dwarven Defender no longer requires a character to be dwarven to be able to take the class (name changed to the more correct "Stalwart Defender") *Arcane Archer no longer requires a character to be half-elf or elf to be able to take the class. *Divine Champion's Divine Wrath is now 3 times a day use. *Palemaster now gives Eldritch Blast progression with warlock. *Warpriest progression now accounts towards Turn Undead progression ''New classes'' *Monstrous classes such as "Outsider", "Undead" and others are allowed to be chosen by everyone. However these will give no racial abilities, nor are they required to be taken except by some special race request creatures (the ones requested from DMs, not the ones you can readily select from lists) *Mystic Theurge (PrC) which allows getting progress in any caster class, however classes such as bard, warlock, sorcerer, Spirit Shaman, Favored soul will require at least single class level taken after the mystic theurge to update the spell/invocation selection due to NWN2 engine limitation. While not by the books all combinations are allowed to simulate any of the other dual-caster PrCs same time. Also progresses Warlock Eldritch Blast. 'Death/Respawn Penalty' *Experience: lose 1% of full experience amount. *Gold: Levels 1-3 cause no gold penalty. On level 4 you will lose 50 gold, level 5 100 gold, level 6 150 gold... i.e. +50 gp on each new gained level. *Teleporting back to place of death: There is such a possibility through the Dustmen Arcanist whom will port you back to the spot of death, for 25 gp/level. This will hopefully keep groups less separated. *In SCoD we won't be using the Fugue Plane system, as we believe that dying itself is kind of... a once per a lifetime experience. However neither do we believe everyone is immortal or raise dead/resurrection does not exist (they should be much more rare and expensive to use though). By default player death is treated mechanically as 'gravely wounded', so just keep in mind that roleplay still beats the 'immortality' mentality. Nobody really wants to die (Exception: suicidal characters). 'De-Leveling' *Water of the River Styx - There is bowl in the Gatehouse in the Hive Ward for you to find which allows this possibility. *In SCoD we have a system to de-level characters without DM assistance, however it bears reminding that it is 'only' taking experience away; you will not be able to get any experience back... there has been added enough warnings in-game, so it should be pretty difficult for someone to accidentally click it 3 times... DMs will NOT return experience back to you if you lose it on this. Experience should be relatively easy to gain otherwise as well. *If you make mistakes on your builds, this is the thing you should be counting on, not DMs. Also you can use the nwn2db site to plan your build before-hand. *25% of the lost amount of experience will be added to the DM experience pool. Another 25% of the lost amount of experience will be added to the monster experience pool. 'Factions' *In SCoD we have 15 large factions in Sigil, they aren't like guilds you might remember from other servers, but are rather more similar to 'alignment' and more like a "philosophy to follow". Of course they provide more roleplaying possibilities. *You may join one of the factions in the OOC room, but we've also left possibility to remain undecided, if you'd rather wish to IC join on one, or not join on one at all. *For more information on Factions and compairing to guilds see Existing Factions & Possible Guilds. *When you join a faction, you now get a "Faction Badge". This faction badge stores your faction rank, any influence you have within the faction (Faction Points), and provides a number of functions related to factions. See Faction Badges for details. 'Resting' *Resting will mostly be non-restricted. You won't require camp sets or food to rest and you may rest as often as you wish... with exception of some areas that have prevented resting all together; these are mostly caves in dungeons making them especially dangerous, and forcing you to use your spells more responsibly and waste your potions and scrolls (after all, why collect them if you never use them?). 'For Level Adjustment Races' *In SCoD there are few major changes regarding level adjusted races. (planetouched, yuan-ti, drow, duergar, svirfnebli...) *Unlike in the original NWN2, the level adjusted races will need the 'same amount' of experience to get to same level as non-level adjusted races. (i.e. for level adjusted +1-3 races tieflings/aasimars/duergars.. to get to level 2, they need the same 1,000 experience as a normal human does instead of higher amounts of experience). *Though before getting overly thrilled of that, experience gain for them will be slower, as the LA (level adjustment) is added to their level when it comes to spawning monsters, rewarding experience (so you'll gain slightly less experience in the beginning). *Level adjustment races will not be able to reach higher levels than 30 - level adjustment. For instance, a Drow with a level adjustment of +2 can get to level 28, a planetouched with a +1 level adjustment to 29... and so forth. 'Roleplay Rewarding Systems' In SCoD we have two different ways of rewarding roleplay... the DM Reward Pool and the RP Reward Pool. How do they work? Read below! *'DM reward pool': This pool is filled with rewards DMs have given to you personally. It is dealt out once per day when you log in (300 + 100*level xp each time, modified for your characters ECL). *'RP reward pool:' This pool is filled when you roleplay with other people in-game (specifics on exactly how it works we'll keep in the dark, to try and lessen chances of abuse). The xp from this pool is dealt out when you kill monsters. It gives up to 100% bonus on xp from each kill until you have exhausted the pool. *'Styx and the xp pools:' When you use styx water to remove levels from your character (either styx oarsman in ooc room or the styx water in festhall), 25% of your removed xp is placed into the DM reward pool and 25% into you RP reward pool. This will make it faster for you to regain levels, without making rebuilds completely free. 'Druidic backgrounds and wildshape forms' *When creating a new Druid, you have the option of taking a special background which affects which shapes your wildshapes are. *In addition, instead of seeing Wildshape, Bear for example, you see Wildshape, Strength Form, as this was the easiest way to handle the many possible forms. You'll see this change even if you don't take a special background and stick with the regular Wildshapes. *The 4 shapes are now called: Strength, Dexterous, Resilient, and Special, corresponding to Bear, Wild, Boar, and Badger. The original forms were loosely based around these concepts and we adjusted their stats a bit to reflect this better as originally the Bear was by far the best form and the Badger was a waste of time. *Also, do not be dismissive of the special forms. Many of them have weaker attacks, but something special added to their attacks or some other property. Also, the special forms have the most balanced stats with DEX being slightly higher than average and STR being slightly weaker. *As an extra bonus, all dire level forms (i.e: level 12) get the Multiattack feat. *If you are wondering why there is no planar Druid, or Celestial or Infernal, well, basically for the moment we couldn't really think of enough good forms, apart from making Celestial/Infernal animals, which just didn't seem right. A later update may take thes into further consideration. On with the backgrounds and their forms. First form listed is the basic form, the second one is the "dire" form obtained at level 12. *'Druid of the Woods': Similar to the regular forms, but keeps the standard shapes when he should get Dire forms but with the Dire forms stats. *'Druid of the Elements': This Druid likely grew up on one of the elemental planes. Genasi are highly likely to be this sort of Druid. **Strength: Minor Earth Elemental/Weak Earth Elemental **Dexterous: Minor Air Elemental/Weak Air Elemental **Resilient: Minor Water Elemental/Weak Water Elemental **Special: Minor Fire Elemental/Weak Fire Elemental *'Druid of the Jungle': Perfect for a Druid that plans on having a Dinosaur animal companion. **Strength: Deinonychus/Megaraptor **Dexterous: Python/Anaconda **Resilient: Bombardier Beetle/Giant Stag Beetle **Special: Young Panther/Adult Panther *'Druid of the Desert' **Strength: Young Giant Scorpion/Adult Giant Scorpion **Dexterous: Young Leopard/Adult Leopard **Resilient: Young Fire Beetle/Adult Fire Beetle **Special: Young Basilisk/Adult Basilisk *'Druid of the Underdark': Highly suited to Drow, Deep Gnome, and Duergar characters. **Strength: Young Umber Hulk/Adult Umber Hulk **Dexterous: Young Giant Spider/Adult Giant Spider **Resilient: Young Carrion Crawler/Adult Carrion Crawler **Special: Giant Rat/Dire Rat *'Druid of the Cold Mountains' **Strength: Young Mountain Cat/Adult Mountain Cat **Dexterous: Young Snow Leopard/Adult Snow Leopard **Resilient: Young Arctic Wolf/Adult Arctic Wolf **Special: Wolverine/Dire Wolverine Category:Gameworlds